Seventy years of bi-partisanship have gone into creating a credible deterrence strategy to cope with the challenges posed to our foreign policy in an era of nuclear powers and the means of delivering them. Our deterrence strategy rests upon the elimination and reduction of doubt as to whether certain actions against ourselves and our allies will produce a response by the U.S. that is unacceptable to a potential enemy. The weaving of alliances and other measures taken to implement and maintain this strategy has been supported by every President, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, both Republican and Democratic, since the fateful dropping of those early atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II and ushered in the dangerous nuclear age. This credibility of our response and commitments to our allies have been seriously, if not fatally, weakened by Donald Trump’s clearly ignorant insertion of doubt into the equation. He might as well have invited North Korea across the “no-man’s land” and across the 38th parallel and on into our...

This is the year of bluster and pomposity among some Republicans. First, Donald Trump says that although he doesn’t know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, he’ll know all he needs to in 24 hours. Then, of course, he’ll be the greatest foreign policy President we’ve ever seen. Twenty-four hours, that’s all it will take. Today, Dick Cheney said that by agreeing to the Iran deal the U.S. “agreed to guarantee that the means of its own destruction” will have been given to Iran. “Madness,” he called it…

The Iran and Greek deals. Taking stock. If the Iran deal kept the conventional arms embargo, it should be a Win,
Win deal. Tsipras and Syrza having some intra-party opposition. May require a National Coalition Government.

It is very unlikely that the E.U. will allow Greek banks to go under with the possible consequences of Greece leaving. But seeming tragedy-about-to-ensue reports as both sides negotiate with the brinkmanship model in mind is likely to continue; more a la the countries on the other side of the Mediterranean than staid Germany. The major world stock and bond markets (with spillover into the commodities markets) have shown the greatest reversals of the year as rumors abound, first suggesting, then rejecting, then suggesting again the possibility of a deal. Standard and Poor upgraded the chance that Greece would leave the E.U. to greater than 50 percent. Tomorrow (Wednesday), according to the latest rumor, Greece will meet with Germany, and presumably Margaret Thatcher-like stubborn Chancellor Angela Merkel, to make yet another proposal. A meeting Sunday with all of the EU’s heads of state rumor is also being floated. We have also heard of a call by President Obama to Chancellor Minister Merkel today. Presumably this was to reiterate...